Understanding addiction
The pattern of resisting and escaping pain
Taking medicine photo created by jcomp - www.freepik.com
Just like forgiveness arise as a natural symptom of acceptance and understanding, so too does the dissolution of any addiction, as a result of healing the core underlying emotional wound.
It's a natural process that cannot be forced because it is not the subject of the addiction that makes one an addict, the substance or activity can always be replaced with something else, it is the root or core emotional wounding that makes one an addict. The obsessive and compulsive desire to escape the pain and hurt that you feel incapable of facing, regardless of the consequences. Both urge and desire are stronger and louder than the awareness of any consequence because it is so deeply rooted in fear.
A fear that threatens your sense of survival.
Needless to say, this core emotional wound is not just any emotional wound. It is the deepest suppressed emotional imprint we have, often covered up by many layers of shame. Any surface-level emotional wounding cannot create a strong addiction, the addiction arises only as a result of a continuing attempt to suppress, deny and disown the emotion. The more you push something away and resist it, the more painful it will become when it comes back, hitting you in the face.
And it will come back!
There is important information hidden within our pain, a message. The pain we feel from resistance is asking us to pay attention, like an alarm bell. It acts like a clue to finding our happiness and is a catalyst to the awareness of what we truly need and want in life.
In fact, it serves you immensely when you know how to pick up on the subtle clues you are given.
You cannot turn it off
Resistance works like a pendulum; if you push it to one side it will inevitably swing right back at you with a greater force than before.
This is why addictions escalate, you will need a greater amount to cover up the pain you are hiding underneath because the intensity rises more and more as a direct result of the added force inherent in the resistance itself.
For this reason, you cannot force someone to give up their 'drug of choice', nor can you force away the addiction itself. To decrease and ultimately stop the addiction, people have to consciously choose to move towards their healing and the resolution they need, themselves. This is not easy to do because it does not only mean that you have to become aware of your pain, the original emotional wounding, but also that you willingly have to choose to face it and 'walk right into the eye of the tornado' to sit with your pain.
To hold space for the unreleased emotions within and allow yourself to feel it all, no matter how strong or unpleasant this emotion may be.
Teal Swan famously said: "The only way out, is in" and as far as my understanding goes, she is correct in this estimation.
A few of the words used are defined as such:
symptom: an indication of the existence of something
dissolution: the action or process of dissolving or being dissolved
addiction: an obsessive pattern of suppressing and escaping negatively charged and unwanted emotions, by the usage of a particular substance or activity to divert your focus from the root cause
imprint: a mark or outline on something, a lasting effect
catalyst: a thing or person that causes a sudden change, unexpectedly or prematurely